1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to a cell suction support system that supports an operation of sucking cells or cell components.
2. Description of the Related Art
In studies of the biological system, there are frequently performed operations of identifying a characteristic cell among plenty of cells in a cell culture well, and of sucking the identified cell or a component of the cell. For example, a drug development screening process is performed during a course of drug development for finding or designing a new drug. In this process, a compound indicating drug efficacy and/or activity is searched among plenty of candidate compounds. During this process, a cell indicating a significantly unique change is selected from a group of cells in a cell culture well in which a candidate compound is provided. Furthermore, the selected cell or a cell component of the cell is sucked, and analysis such as mass spectrometry is performed to the sucked cell or cell component.
In the operation of sucking a cell, an operator performs the operation using a dispenser and a suction pipette equipped with a suction tip while identifying a cell to be sucked through a microscope. In the operation of sucking a cell component, an operator performs the operation using a microscopic tip called a nanospray tip while identifying a cell to be sucked through a microscope.
Furthermore, apart from the operation of sucking and analyzing a specific cell or cell component in a cell culture well, a cell analysis system that performs the following operations has been practically used. That is, this system photographs a microscopic image of a large volume of cells in a cell culture well, and performs image processing of the photographed image. Accordingly, this system distinguishes individual cells, and calculates in real time a characteristic amount, such as size or brightness, of each cell.
In the above-described cell analysis system, an operator can detect a characteristic cell and observe a time-dependent change of the cell, based on the calculated characteristic amount. Furthermore, the characteristic amount of each cell is illustrated in a histogram or a scatter diagram, and is also displayed in a list. However, this cell analysis system only performs analysis with the characteristic amount obtained from the image. This cell analysis system is not assumed to analyze in detail a specific cell that has been found by the analysis.
It is noted that literatures related to this art include, for example, Japanese Patent No. 5317983, Japanese Patent No. 5190773, Japanese Patent No. 5056871 and Japanese Patent No. 5157950.